Prescription medications, if taken as prescribed, may have a positive impact to a person's health. Nevertheless, patients of a pharmacy often do not take their prescription drugs properly. Indeed, consistently taking medications on schedule may prove difficult to the patient. Whether it is from forgetfulness, inconvenience, or discomfort, doses are often missed. In addition, patients often do not timely renew or refill their prescription, or may even quit taking the prescribed medication altogether. Some patients may intend to continue taking the prescribed medication but wait too long to reorder additional prescription drugs. In other words, patients may miss doses because they are waiting for the renewal or refill of a prescription to be filled. Additionally, for a renewal, the pharmacy generally requires a new written prescription from the patient's doctor approving the continuation of therapy. In this case, it is likely that the doctor would request an office visit before writing the prescription. Scheduling conflicts and overall delays due to the required visit can result in prolonged nonadherence to the drug regimen. The patient's health and well-being may be adversely affected.
In addition to varying degrees of nonadherence to a drug regimen, patients may not be aware of certain opportunities. The opportunity may be as simple as a lower cost, alternative, chemically-equivalent drug is available, or the patient may have become eligible for a promotional savings. In yet another example, a new convenience feature may have been added to the patients' pharmacy benefit plan but requires action to reap the benefits.